


Interplanetary F1

by F1_rabbit



Category: Formula 1 RPF, Motorcycling RPF, WEC RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Androids, Clones, Future, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-28 15:43:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 7,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8452150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/F1_rabbit/pseuds/F1_rabbit
Summary: Human racers are a thing of the past. Now, the elite from both the clones and the androids are set to race against each other in a series known as Interplanetary F1.





	1. Prologue

In the year 3017 a new series of racing would be created. The elite from both the clones and the androids, set to race against each other in the newly created Interplanetary F1.

Hundreds of years ago, as sports got more strenuous, it was clear that humans were no longer able to keep up with the demands. So science replaced them with genetically engineered clones, but there were those who considered that inhuman, and the rise of android athletes filled the void.

Twenty drivers, and ten races, set all throughout the solar system.

There would be only one champion.


	2. Mercury

Stoffel stared out of the window of the spaceship, amazed by how small Earth looked. He'd never been further than Mars before, but here he was, on his way to Mercury for the first round of the Interplanetary F1.

He was humbled by the view, and he wondered what his original would have thought of it all. It was strange for him to realise that he wasn't unique, merely a copy of someone else, but that was where the similarities ended. All his experiences, all his memories, they were his and his alone. That made him unique.

His boyfriend, Kevin, was staring out of a different window, his eyes wide and a smile on his face.

"It's so beautiful," Stoffel said, trying to swim through the air to get closer to Kevin.

"I was thinking, since the others are asleep," Kevin said, a cheeky grin on his face, "Maybe we could have sex in zero gravity."

Stoffel laughed, glancing over at André who was sleeping soundly, strapped into a chair so that he wouldn't float about. The others were all elsewhere, and Stoffel knew that it was the best chance that they were going to get for a little alone time.

Kevin unzipped his space suit, using the loops on Stoffel's to drag him closer as he pulled him into a messy kiss. There was something about floating in zero gravity that had his mind reeling with all the possibilities, and Stoffel worked his way down to Kevin's hard cock, licking his lips as he stared up at him.

And that was when he saw the reflection of Dany and Carlos in the window.

"How long have you guys been there?" Stoffel asked, coughing to cover the sound of Kevin zipping up his spacesuit.

"Just got here," Dany said, glancing around the room as he manoeuvred himself into a seat, pulling the straps tight as he got comfy. "Please tell me there's not come floating around in here." Dany sounded disappointed more than anything, although they'd all raced against each other for years in what was affectionately known as Formula Clone.

André laughed and Carlos tried not to smile as the others all started to file in, getting ready for their landing on Mercury.

The surface was unimpressive, shielded from them by the biosphere that made sure that air was breathable, and the temperature was suitable.

Stoffel was still staring out the windows with admiration, and Kevin reached out to hold his hand. It was frowned upon, clones dating each other, but Kevin didn't care, it was a trait that he shared with his original.

They were ushered into the paddock, this was to be their home for the next few days, before they returned to Earth to compete in Formula Clone. It was going to be a busy year for all of them, but it was the chance of a lifetime, to see the solar system.

It was worth all the time spent travelling, and all the time dealing with the media. As they walked through the concourse, the reporters swarmed around them, asking what they thought of their chances against the robots, and what would their originals think of racing on other planets.

That question had always confused Stoffel, although they looked like their originals, and had the same DNA, albeit enhanced to make them stronger and healthier, that was where the similarities ended.

By the time they were finally in the paddock it was a blessed relief, and Stoffel had just enough time to get ready before the first free practice session.

Stoffel looked over and he saw the robots being unpacked from their boxes. He watched in fascination, as the robotech got them all up and running. It seemed cruel to switch them off and on as they were required, but it was just the way. They were robots and nothing more.

*

Once Stoffel was in the car, he felt free, the solar powered engines firing up as he took off. The crew were all in their space suits, and he took off out the pit lane carefully, watching as the crew disappeared into the distance.

He followed the hoops that were floating around, marking out the track that had been designed by the state of the art Tilke track layout AI.

It was tough switching between the dark and light side of the planet, the biosphere had been built on the line between the two, and even though his space suit, and with the car around him, he could feel the chill, and the burn as the temperature changed dramatically, the seven hundred Kelvin surface scorching him even through his tinted shield.

His instruments were flaky, the magnetic flux of Mercury was an issue, and he had to rely on his instincts, allowing them to guide him around as he avoided the other drivers.

Technically they were pilots, but the name drivers had stuck, even for those who were clones or robots of motorcycle racers. Nothing with actual wheels had been raced for many years, and now that interplanetary travel had got easier, it made sense to have races on planets other than Earth and Mars.

The session went well for him, and as he headed down to Kevin's garage, he saw the robots being put back in their boxes for the night. He could have sworn that one of them looked unhappy about it, but Stoffel was sure that he was just projecting. The thought of being stuffed away when he wasn't working sent a shiver down his spine.

*

The race went well, fourth, but he was the highest finishing clone, which was a nice feeling. It wasn't a surprise that the robots finished top, they were programmed to be the best drivers, tweaked like their ships until they found the perfect set up.

There was something that didn't sit right with him about the robots, and he couldn't put his finger on it.

Sleep was invaded by them, Stoffel felt like he was running after them, and there was a man with thick dark hair, but he couldn't see his face. He wasn't sure why he thought they were male, they were shrouded in a cape, but something in his subconscious was trying to tell him something.

Stoffel woke with a jolt, cuddled up in Kevin's arms, the glow of the sun bathing them both in its light, making Kevin look like an angel.

"You were having a bad dream," Kevin said, stroking his hair as he relaxed.

Stoffel reached out to hold his hand, glad that he had Kevin by his side. "I love you."


	3. Venus

Dany was in the shuttle, heading for Venus. He had two wins in Formula Clone under his belt, and he was confident that he could get on the podium here.

They weren't going to land on the surface, the atmosphere was too inhospitable for that, even with current technology, building something that could withstand over seven hundred Kelvin and the ninety atmospheres of pressure was costly. There was a floating station, hovering fifty kilometres over the surface, and they were going to use that as their paddock.

It was going to be a challenge, racing through the toxic atmosphere, and Dany couldn't wait.

*

Dany clipped Pascal as they both dived through the hoop for the corner, the crunch of his screen cracking made his stomach twist, and he felt the engines stutter. The atmosphere was corroding the controls, sending him downwards to the planet's surface.

He was heading towards his death.

Dany braced, even though the toxic fumes were eating through his space suit, and he laughed as the car went down.

*

Dany woke up to see all of Team Clone standing over him, and he saw the worry in Carlos' eyes.

"I'm fine," Dany said, glancing down at his paper white skin. Carlos ran his fingers over the little tattoo on the inside of Dany's wrist, the number two marked there to say that it was the second time that he'd been cloned. It was a point of pride that he'd never had to be re-cloned before, and he was just glad that their memories were saved before every race.

"You're no longer a virgin," Kevin said, laughing as he held out his wrist so that everyone could see the number seven tattooed there. He'd been a little wild as a rookie, and he was glad that he'd calmed down a bit as he'd got older. Waking up for the first time was like the worst hangover, every muscle aching from having been grown in less than a day.

André appeared with a glass of protein drink, and Dany wrinkled his nose before downing it in one.

Pascal had been sitting behind Stoffel, but he shuffled closer, and Dany could see what he was thinking from the wrinkles on his forehead.

"It's just racing," Dany said, reaching out his hand to shake Pascal's, "Next time I'll be faster."

They all laughed, glad that Dany had been re-cloned without any issues, and no-one noticed the nervous edge to Carlos' normally hearty laugh.

"We are crazy to do this," Stoffel said, raising an eyebrow. They all knew that if they weren't racing, they wouldn't be here, only the useful or the rich got cloned.

"They were crazy to create us."


	4. Earth

The Earth grand prix was held at Spa-Francorchamps, even though everyone knew that it was a bad idea. Cars that could do one third of the speed of light weren't meant to race around a small track, and turning down the engines had led to a lot of them exploding when the extra energy had nowhere to go.

Dani was looking at the remains of the androids, some would need to be replaced, but others could be repaired.

Marc was missing an arm, and Dani found out the spares before setting to work. It was eerie how still Marc was, almost corpse-like, and Dani found himself talking to him, even though he wasn't capable of answering.

"I'm going to get you all patched up." Dani brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes, marvelling at the detail that went into the androids.

He looked over him as he prepared to solder all the connectors together, hundreds of tiny wires that functioned as the nervous system. The cables for the tendons were much easier to connect and the new arm fitted into the socket perfectly.

It would take a few hours for the synthetic skin to heal, and Dani went to get himself a cup of coffee before moving on to salvaging the rest of Marc's friends.

He fixed up a couple of the other androids, looking in horror at the burnt remains of Niki, although apart from the burns he was relatively unharmed.

Dani had been looking forward to coming home, but now, in his windowless basement, he wished he was out in the vastness of space.

Sipping at his cold coffee, wrinkling up his face as the bitter taste hit his tongue, he switched Marc on, hoping that his hard drive was undamaged.

The lights behind his eyes didn't come on, and Dani let out a groan, heading for the coffee machine on the way to get his laptop to run diagnostics.

Normally if the hard drive was damaged they would be replaced, but Dani was curious to see if he could repair Marc. It seemed a waste to scrap the rest of him for the sake of a corrupted disk.

Dani made himself comfy, preparing for a long night as he sipped at his coffee.

*

Dani woke up with his head on Marc's thigh, his laptop sitting on the table next to him. He wiped the drool off him, although his clothes were just flimsy coverings so that Dani didn't have to look at his genitals while he worked.

It was one of the unsettling things about the androids, how human they looked, even though there was no need for them to have those bits, they were there because humans had them.

He drank the last of his cold coffee, and he saw that the files were all there and uncorrupted on Marc's hard drive. So why weren't they working?

Dani copied all of the files onto his laptop. He knew that he shouldn't, the programming of androids was state of the art software, and the companies that had developed it didn't want others copying their hard work, but his curiosity had got the better of him.

He backed it all up on an external hard drive, antiquated technology, but he was sure that uploading it to his own server would send up red flags.

This was something that he was going to have to hide, from everyone.


	5. Mars

Stoffel was watching Earth fade into the distance as they headed off to Mars. He glanced over to see that Kevin was floating towards the boxes with the robots in, the others were either asleep or had gone to look out the window at the view of Mars approaching on the other side of the ship.

Kevin unclipped the box, and the lid floated open, letting the robot float free as Kevin's eyes lit up.

"Put it back in its box," Stoffel said, but Kevin just grinned, stroking the side of the robot's face as he stared at him.

They all knew how to turn androids on, they all had robots at home, but it was different when they didn't belong to them, and worse still, when they were state of the art technology. If Kevin damaged it, he was going to be in big trouble.

Kevin held its ear lobe, waiting for the lights behind its eyes to flash as it loaded up.

Stoffel stood over his shoulder, fascinated by it all as he waited for the android to boot up.

The android blinked, glancing around as it tried to work out where it was.

Kevin waved his hand in front of his eyes, and Stoffel grabbed his wrist, glaring at him as the bright blue eyes of the android looked at them, waiting for its instructions.

"Look at these lips," Kevin said, squishing its lips as Stoffel pulled his hand away.

"Don't treat him like that."

"Him?" Kevin smiled. Stoffel knew that he shouldn't think of robots as having a gender, they were always referred to as it, but seeing Kevin tease the android didn't sit right with him, and he wasn't sure why.

"Just put him back in his box." Stoffel watched Kevin nod, and he turned to go back to his seat, using the handles to pull himself along. He was back in his seat when he saw that Kevin had ignored him.

"I wonder if _he_ has ever been kissed?" Kevin said, stuffing him back into his box as he blew him a kiss.

Stoffel rushed over as Kevin laughed, staring at the box with the android in. They were back in their seats before André returned, and Stoffel felt his blood run cold when he realised that Kevin hadn't switched the robot off.

Thankfully they didn't have long before they arrived on Mars, there was an actual city on the surface that he been built over the years, rather than just a minimalist space station.

They would still be inside, the atmosphere on Mars wasn't enough to support life, but it was much more hi-tech and Stoffel was excited by the prospect of it all.

*

Dani unpacked the androids when he realised that Jolyon had been left on, and he glanced around to see if the crew were about, but they were long gone. He shook his head, peering at Jolyon but he showed no signs of damage.

Jolyon seemed to be functioning fine, and Dani breathed a sigh of relief, at least the crew hadn't broken him.

Dani was about to move on to the next android when Jolyon spoke.

"What does kissing feel like?"

Dani's blood ran cold, androids shouldn't be thinking about that, it wasn't part of their programming.

He made a mental note to check Jolyon over before the race, but the feeling of unease didn't subside.


	6. 24 Hours of the Solar System

André sat looking at the plan for the weekend, Stoffel and Kevin sat next to him as they prepared for the twenty-four hour endurance race. They had to get from one end of the solar system to the other, ending at Pluto.

It required space stations dotted throughout the solar system, for repairs and driver changes.

Their main rivals were the androids that they had been battling against in Interplanetary F1, and Stoffel wanted to show that clones were better than robots.

Dany, Carlos and Pascal were in the other car, and although Stoffel wanted to win, he would be happy if another clone was standing on the top step of the podium.

*

Zooming through space, Stoffel took in the stunning beauty all around him as he made his way towards Jupiter. Kevin had done the first stint, and André had done the middle section, navigating his way round the sun, dealing with the solar flares that had upset all of their controls.

Now Stoffel was on the home run, heading for Pluto as he listened to his race engineers tell him how far Nico and his team were behind him.

He felt confident that he could win, and he set to focusing on the finish line.

With just an hour to go, there was a comet rushing past the car, forcing him to take evasive action to avoid slamming into it. He was a long way off his planned course, and he mentally worked out how much time he'd lost.

It was going to be close.

Pluto was rapidly growing as he headed towards it, willing the car to go faster as the team cheered him on from the space station.

Out the corner of his eye he could see Nico's car heading towards Pluto, and he decided to use the emergency reserve.

The car lurched forwards, the g-forces crushing him against his seat as he aimed for Pluto. But at this speed the steering was unpredictable, and he struggled to slow the car enough to head towards the finish line.

He sailed past Nico, and Pluto, watching as his win disappeared.

Stoffel got the car turned round, and third place was a long way behind, so second was theirs, but he couldn't help thinking about how close they'd got to winning.

*

The celebrations started the second that André and Kevin arrived on Pluto, and Stoffel was happy to be standing on the podium, enjoying every second of it the praise being lavished upon them.

As they headed off to Pluto's only nightclub, Stoffel saw Nico and his teammates being stuffed back into their boxes, and for a second, he felt sorry for them.


	7. The Asteroid Belt

Dani was rushing around the workshop, for this weekend's race they were all stationed in a biosphere on Ceres, in the middle of the asteroid belt. It had been made especially for the race, but it was going to be used by scientists studying the asteroid belt after they left, previously they had done all their research from a space station nearby so that there was less risk of them being hit by a stray asteroid.

He was getting all the androids out of their boxes, making sure that they were functioning correctly for the race.

Dani had been studying the files that he'd copied from Marc, trying to figure out what was hidden on his hard drive.

He scrolled through all of the files, most of them were standard for the androids' operating system, and the additional programming was all there to enable them to fly the cars.

But then he found something hidden away.

<MMarquez20260718.hmbu>

Marc's memories.

These weren't the recordings that the android made while functioning. These belonged to an actual human.

They were the same backup files that they used for saving and restoring a clone's memories after they'd been regrown. But they were no use to an android, they were custom made software for a specific purpose.

Dani knew that he shouldn't load Marc up using them, there was a reason they were hidden, but his curiosity got the better of him.

He held his breath as the lights behind Marc's eyes flashed, and for a while it seemed like he was frozen, an error loading that had caused a glitch.

But then he spoke.

"Dani?" Marc's eyes darted around, looking at the spare parts piled up at the edge of the room, disembodied limbs with their wires hanging out. "Where am I?"

"We're on Ceres, getting ready for the sixth round of the Interplanetary F1," Dani said, speaking slowly as he saw Marc's eyes go wide, a very human reaction for an android to mimic. "You're racing this weekend."

Marc's eyes flashed as he stared at Dani. "I used to race a motorbike."

Dani felt a shiver run down his spine, and he reached out to hold Marc's hand, needing to offer him comfort as his own mind tried to cope with the implications of it all.

He had read all about the careers of the android's originals, out of curiosity more than anything else, and he knew what to ask to find out which set of memories Marc was using.

"How many world championships do you have?" Dani used his soft and reassuring voice, as though he was talking to a child, although it was how he talked to the androids when they were switched off and he had to repair them.

"Eleven," Marc said, without hesitation, but then his face scrunched up in confusion, "No, two."

Dani could see the pain in his eyes, the lights flashing as he tried to reconcile two conflicting sets of memories. His original, who lived over a thousand years ago, he had eleven world championships in a series called MotoGP, back when cars had wheels, and used petrol to run rather than solar power. But Marc the android, he had two world championships so far, in Formula 1, the name kept for all these years as a tribute to all the drivers that had come before them.

"It's going to be okay," Dani said, still holding Marc's hand as he reached out to press on his ear lobe, switching Marc off before he damaged his processors.

He made sure that the original's memories were hidden away, and he loaded up Marc to check that he was now functioning correctly.

"How many world championships do you have?"

"Two."

Dani nodded, glad that his little experiment hadn't hurt Marc, even though he would just be replaced by a new android, Dani disliked seeing that happen.

He glanced over at the other androids and saw that Jolyon was talking to Will. Both of them looked comfortable with each other, even though social skills weren't something that was programmed into them.

It looked like Marc wasn't the only one who had his original's memories.

The real question was – why bother installing them in the androids?


	8. Jupiter

Stoffel had been dragging his eyes over Kevin for the entire of take-off, and now that they were out of the atmosphere and on their way to Jupiter, they were looking for somewhere quiet to have a little alone time.

It had been a hectic year, and there was still three months to go before Formula Clone and the Interplanetary F1 came to an end. The androids were still leading the Interplanetary F1, but Stoffel was third, and he was sure that he could make up the difference by the end of the year. There were only four points between him and Nico in the lead, and Marc was only one point ahead of him in second place.

Stoffel saw Carlos slip out of the bathroom, and he gave them a knowing smile as he floated towards the sound of Dany howling with laughter, no doubt telling jokes to the others.

Kevin dragged Stoffel inside the cubicle, locking the door behind them before crashing into Stoffel, their lips pressed together as they tangled their limbs together, floating around the room as they made out.

Stoffel was grabbing at Kevin's perfect rear, sliding his hand inside his jogging bottoms as he pressed their bodies together, his shoulder bumping against the sink as Kevin rested his legs against the wall.

The feel of Kevin's throbbing cock in his hand sent sparks of lust through his body, and Stoffel let out a groan, biting on Kevin's lip as he started to stroke him. Grinding up against his thigh as he went in for a sloppy kiss, muffling all of Kevin's gasps and moans as he played with the pre-come leaking from the tip, soaking up each twitch of Kevin's lips.

Kevin broke the kiss, nuzzling against Stoffel's neck as he bit down on his shoulder, Stoffel coming with a grunt as a whimper escaped from Kevin's lips, shuddering in orgasm and gasping Stoffel's name as his body went limp, leaving him sticky and sated.

"I love you," Stoffel whispered, stroking Kevin's hair as they floated in zero gravity, their legs still tangled together.

"I love you too." Kevin giggled, his laugh as breathless as his voice, and Stoffel knew that he would never get tired of hearing Kevin say that.

They held each other for the longest time, soaring through solar system as Stoffel whispered sweet nothings to Kevin.

Stoffel groaned when the time came to get back into their seats, and he made sure that there was no evidence of what they'd been up to anywhere on their clothes. He caught sight of something small stuck on his arm, and he studied it carefully. It was a contact lens, one of the crew must have lost it when they were cleaning the spaceship.

Clones had perfect vision, they were genetically engineered to be that way, and androids were created with state of the art optical systems.

Stoffel shuffled back to his seat, Kevin following him with a grin on his face as they got strapped in for landing on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons that had people living there, mostly scientists that were studying the outer planets, but these cities were growing all the time as more people moved off Earth.

Carlos was the last to get into his seat, and André made sure that he was okay before preparing to land. The air was dry in the spaceship, one of the problems of recycled air, and Carlos' eyes were watering, but they would be in the biosphere soon.

Stoffel had never realised how much of a luxury fresh air and water was until he'd spent the year travelling around without them.

It was an amazing experience, and he was glad that Kevin was by his side through it all.


	9. Saturn

Dani had left all the androids out for the journey. He'd told the clones that he had installed updates and he needed to check that they were working correctly, but Dani just wanted to see what the androids would do if they had a chance to actually interact with each other.

After he'd stopped the clones playing with them as though they were toys, sending them off to get food from the canteen. He knew that the clones were often only fed nutrient drinks, just like the androids, and the lure of actual food had been too good for them to resist.

Dani's stomach grumbled and he went to get another coffee, before he settled in a chair to go through all the files stored on the androids. He definitely shouldn't have copied them off each hard drive, and he was probably going to jail if the company found out he'd done this, but something about it all just didn't sit right with him.

*

Jolyon was gazing at Marcus, and Dani raised an eyebrow, trying not to stare at them.

"Can I kiss you?" Jolyon asked, and Marcus froze for a second before smiling so wide that his eyes scrunched shut.

"Yes."

Dani could have sworn that Marcus blushed, and Jolyon leant in for a kiss. It was chaste and brief, but it was something above and beyond the programming for either of them.

He tried to tell himself that it was leftover subroutines that were meant for some other type of android, like sexbots, but that didn't make any sense.

Dani looked through Jolyon's and Marcus' files, trying to see if there was any sign of the strange files that he'd found on Marc's hard drive.

<JPalmer20320109.hmbu>

<MEricsson20291008.hmbu>

Hidden away were human memory backups, and Dani compressed his lips, glancing around as he set to finding out more about the private lives of their originals.

He felt his heart rate soar as he heard Kevin shriek with laughter, clearly the clones had finished eating and were returning to their seats before landing.

Dani shut his laptop so that the clones wouldn't see what he was up to, but he'd already got all the information he needed.

Jolyon and Marcus had been married, and it seemed that their androids had those memories stored away inside them.

Dani felt his stomach twist, coffee on an empty stomach combined with space travel was a bad combination, but it was nothing compared to the unease he felt about the androids.

If they still had partial access to their human memories, it was nothing short of cruel to switch them on and off at will.

The clones all rushed into the room, floating back into their chairs, and thankfully no-one noticed that Jolyon and Marcus were holding hands. Dani had no idea how he would explain that to the clones.


	10. Uranus

Dani was crouched at the back of the garage, tears streaming down his face as he tried to make sense of it all. The androids all had the memories of their originals hidden away, with other programs designed to stop them accessing the files running at the same time.

The basic functions, such as walking, were just a generic base code, something common to all androids, but the skills for them to race would have taken millions of hours to code.

So his predecessors had found a short cut. They had uploaded the memories from a real human, ones who had been racers during their lives, before the technology for cloning was advanced enough, and used that as a way to program all the racing skills.

But that left all those pesky memories from their originals that they didn't want to androids to remember, although that was easily fixed, rerouting all memory retrieval requests to a separate file, where everything that the androids saw and did was stored.

It was inhuman, and Dani wanted no part of it. He thought about quitting his job, but then there would be no-one to look out for the androids, and he thought of them as his family.

Dani wanted to keep them safe, but he didn't know how he could do that.

He was just one human.

*

Dani stumbled towards the bathroom, he needed to wash his face and pull himself together. If anyone saw him like this there would be too many questions, and he wasn't sure he could lie convincingly.

He splashed his face with water and he started to feel more human, any redness to his eyes could be blamed on solder fumes in a cramped workshop. He took a chance to get a breather, sitting on the toilet seat as he composed himself.

Dani wandered out, surprising Carlos and making him drop what he was holding.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." Dani rushed in to pick up what Carlos had dropped, and that was when he realised what he was holding.

It was a case for contact lenses.

"I…" Carlos slumped to the floor, tears streaming down his cheeks as Dani tried to comfort him, but he didn't know what to say.

Defective clones were 'released' which sounded more ominous than it really was. It just meant that they got to live out their lives like the rest of them, with no free pass to start over if they got hurt or injured. Although they were much less susceptible to illnesses, and they had superior healing powers.

"It's all going to be okay," Dani said, reaching out to hug Carlos, his short arms only just able to wrap around him.

"All I wanted was to race, and now…" Carlos sniffed as he tried to wipe the tears out of his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. "They'll find out that I'm human, and I won't be able to race anymore."

There were more tears as Dani comforted him, but what Carlos had said had shocked Dani.

Human? That was meant to be impossible, no human could match the focus and strength of clones and androids. Could they?

*

André came rushing into the bathroom, followed by the other clones, who had all decided to go for lunch at exactly the same time. Dani was squished up under the sink, Carlos still cuddled in under his arm as the rest crowded round them, and André crouched down so that he was at eye level with Carlos.

"What's happened?"

Carlos bit his lip, shaking his head as Dani held him, and he could see that André was imagining the worst.

"You're one of us," Dany said, pushing his way through the crowd of clones so that he could sit beside Carlos, "You can trust us with anything,"

Carlos sniffed, and Dany held him tight, stroking his back as he comforted him.

"I'm not one of you," Carlos said, tears streaming down his cheeks as his hands trembled.

Dany looked confused, and he stroked the side of Carlos' face, brushing a stray strand of hair out of his face.

"You are, no matter what has happened, you will always be my friend." Dany held Carlos as he cried his eyes out, and the others shuffled closer, reaching out so that they were touching some bit of Carlos, offering their solidarity.

"I'm not a clone." Carlos blinked as he scanned their faces. "I'm human."

Dany reached out to hold his hand, stroking the side of it with his thumb as the others all stayed silent.

They were all thinking the same thing – how?

*

When Carlos was a little boy, he'd learned about his very great grandfather, Carlos Sainz the Formula One driver. He'd raced a thousand years ago, and it was thanks to technology that the information about his life was preserved in the archives.

From the moment that he saw one of his races, Carlos knew that it was what he wanted to do when he grew up. But then, when he was a teenager, he realised the 'humans' that he saw racing weren't entirely human. They were genetically engineered clones, made to be superior to humans.

He watched his dream die in front of his eyes, and he dedicated his life to science, but little did he know that it was going to offer him a way to experience his dream.

Carlos had been put in charge of the cloning programme for Formula Clone, and he saw his opportunity.

He said that he'd made a clone, but he just took their place, faking their results so that he could pass all of the bioscans that they had to take. A tattoo on his wrist had been all that he needed to pass as a clone, but he spent the entire time watching over his shoulder.

It was just a funny coincidence that he, Carlos Sainz the thirty-second, had cloned his thirty-times-great-grandfather so that he could race again from beyond the grave.

Only he knew that he was just a human, but that wasn't a disadvantage to him, having a reason to stay alive meant that he was a smart driver. He didn't get into crashes, and he stayed out of incidents between other racers.

Unlike them, if he died, he was going to stay dead.

*

Dany held Carlos tight, and Dani used the opportunity to stand up and let the blood flow back into his legs, but Stoffel just stared at him.

"I won't tell anyone," Dani said, holding his hands up as though he was surrendering.

"Thank you," Dany said, "We owe you."


	11. Neptune

Dani couldn't stop thinking about the androids, they had all the memories of their originals, and yet they weren't free to enjoy their lives.

He knew what he had to do, and he knew just the guys to ask for help.

*

It was a long trip to Neptune, and when they weren't in their racing cars, it was a slow journey. At least the ship that was taking them had artificial gravity. It wasn't quite the same as Earth, but it was an improvement to floating around and bumping into things just to get a cup of coffee, which had to be drunk out of a travel mug to stop it floating away.

The clones were sitting, playing cards and sipping at their nutrient drinks. They were an efficient way of fuelling their bodies, but they were boring.

"Who'd like some cake?" Dani asked, wandering in with a large chocolate sponge cake, and a fresh pot of coffee.

Once everyone had a cup in their hands and a slice of cake in front of them, Dani took a deep breath.

"I need a favour." Dani glanced around, hoping that they would be sympathetic.

"Subtle," André said, laughing as he took a bite of the cake. "How can we help?"

"The androids, they have the memories of their originals, it's not right to keep them in boxes."

"Why do they have them?" Stoffel asked, and Dani explained, trying to keep it simple as he told them all about the history of robotic programming.

"Can't you just take their memories out?" Pascal asked, and Checo stared at him.

"Not easily." Dani shook his head, it was trillions of lines of code, and determining which memories were useful skills and which were irrelevant was a huge task. "They're smart enough to understand that they're androids, they'd just need a little time to adjust to it."

"Really?" André raised an eyebrow, and Dani rushed to get one of the androids out of their box. He switched Will on, before opening the box that Jolyon was in.

Dani led Will to the chair, and he hoped that he could convince the clones that he was telling the truth.

"Who is that guy to you?" Dani asked, pointing at Jolyon.

"He's…" Will's eyes flashed and Dani felt his stomach twist, he needed the clones to understand. "He's my brother."

"Robots don't have brothers," Kevin said, before mumbling his apologies when he saw a frown appear on Will's face, he looked so young, lost and confused.

"Robot?" Will stared at his hands, the detail that had gone into the androids was amazing, and the synthetic skin was indistinguishable from 'real' skin without genetic testing.

Dani nodded, he led Will over to the box containing all the spare parts, and tears rolled down Will's cheeks.

The clones all sat in silence, the cake left half-eaten as they looked at each other.

"I have a plan," Stoffel said, and they all gathered around.

*

The long journey was perfect to draw up a contract, one that would allow the racing androids to be free.

André insisted that there was a clause added that would see Carlos re-cloned at his own research lab, which meant that should the worst happen, they would be able to regrow him.

It was an efficient solution.

There was only one problem, the owner of the Interplanetary F1 series said no.

*

"What are we going to do?" Stoffel asked, "How can we make him agree to it?"

"We're going to go on strike," Niki said, his robotic eyes flashing as everyone turned to look at him. "I did it before, and we can do it again."

André smiled, nodding as he looked at the others. "There's an hour until the race, so the owner has an hour to agree to our conditions… Or we won't race."

He put his hand out, and the others slowly reached out to rest their hands over André's. They all smiled, and Dani led them all back to their dorm room.

They were squished up on the beds, the androids slowly coming to terms with it all. The longer that they were switched on, the more that they raced, the more of their original memories that they were able to access.

"Five minutes to go," Stoffel said, holding Kevin close as they all watched the clock, "I don't think they're going to agree to our terms."

"They will," Niki said, "They need the money from the broadcasters, from the sponsors, and they'll only get it if we're there to race for them."

The seconds were counting down, and the room fell silent, nervous faces staring at the door as they waited for the owner to appear.

Zero.

The door flew open, and the owner strode in, staring at them all as his assistants swarmed around him.

"Fine," he said, slapping the contract down on the table, "I'll agree to your terms." He squiggled his signature at the bottom of the paper, his foot tapping as he waited for all the clones and robots to sign.

Carlos was the last to sign, and the owner raised an eyebrow.

"A human racing, I never thought I would see it."

Dani made a copy of the contract, sharing it with the world as he herded his androids towards their cars, the clones all happy with themselves.

*

The race weekend saw Nico crowned champion, but that wasn't what would go down in history.

It would be remembered for the freedom of the human-based androids, and the start of a new era of racing.

One where clones, androids, and humans all raced alongside each other.

**Author's Note:**

> *and obviously none of this actually happened, it is all a figment of my twisted imagination ;)


End file.
